Legendary lawman - Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Posted: 28 Mar 2021 12:47 AM PDT

It is 1883 and a Black man in tramp shoes, a floppy felt hat and patched overalls walks 28 miles alone through Choctaw Nation to the home of the Coldiron family.

He stops at the Coldiron place to beg for a little food and perhaps a place to rest.

Mama Coldiron takes him in, feeds him supper and offers a spare room.

What she doesn't know is that the poor, hungry traveler is actually famed lawman Bass Reeves, a deputy U.S. Marshal from Arkansas. The clever Reeves has come to her home in disguise to nab her outlaw sons, Thomas and Wayne.

So begins "Hell on the Border," the gripping, hard-to-put-down second entry in a trilogy of historical novels about Reeves by Sidney Thompson, professor of creative writing and African American literature at Texas Christian University.

The book, published by University of Nebraska Press imprint Bison Books, will be released Thursday.

As far as heroes go, Reeves is a hard one to beat. His story is the stuff of American legend.

"Hell on the Border" is the second in a trilogy of novels by Sidney Thompson about Bass Reeves, a deputy U.S. Marshal from Arkansas who became a legend.

Reeves was born enslaved to Arkansas state legislator William Steele Reeves in July 1838 in Crawford County. He became an expert marksman as a teenager and was sent off to the Civil War at the side of George Reeves, William's son, a Texas legislator who fought for the Confederacy.

During the war, Bass Reeves escaped and took refuge in Indian Territory among the Creek and Seminole, according to the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

Freed by the 13th Amendment in 1865, he settled in Van Buren with his wife, Jennie, and their children.

In 1875, Reeves became one of the first Black deputy U.S. marshals for the Western District of Arkansas, which had jurisdiction over the notoriously lawless Indian Territory. He became one of Judge Isaac Parker's most valued deputies, bringing in some of the most dangerous criminals of the time. When he retired in 1907, he was responsible for more than 3,000 arrests. A deeply religious man, Reeves often apprehended his suspects without violence, although he did kill a good many men — perhaps more than 20 — in the line of duty.

He died of Bright's disease on Jan. 12, 1910, at age 71 in Muskogee, Okla.

"He was bigger than any lawman in the wild West; Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok — he was bigger than them," says Art T. Burton, a retired history professor and author of 2007's "Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves," the first scholarly biography of Reeves. Burton also wrote the Reeves entry for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas and is the author of "Black, Red and Deadly: Black and Indian Gunfighters of the Indian Territory, 1870-1907," as well as "Black, Buckskin and Blue: African American Scouts and Soldiers on the Western Frontier."

"He was a real good detective and was really good at solving crimes," Burton says. "He treated people with respect and he never tried to bully them. And there were probably half a dozen assassination attempts on his life."

Though he was written about a little during his time, and his obituary ran in a Washington paper, Reeves' name was never among those wild West legends whose images lived on long after they had passed.

"Due to the fact of who he was, he didn't get a lot of [publicity]," Burton says.

Thompson notes that Reeves' story was excluded from S.W. Harmon's 1898 nonfiction book, also called "Hell on the Border," about Parker.

"I think there was a purposeful attempt to erase him from the historical record," the author says from Fort Worth. "He overshadowed everybody else — white, Black, Native American."

But Reeves' profile has been on the rise. In 2012, a bronze statue by sculptor Harold T. Holden of Reeves on a horse was dedicated in Fort Smith's Pendergraft Park. The exploits of the high-riding deputy were featured in the HBO series "Watchmen." He is the titular character in the 2020 comic book written by Kevin Grevioux, drawn by David Williams and published by Little Rock-based Allegiance Arts & Entertainment; and appeared in "Un Cow-Boy Dans Le Cotton," a 2020 issue of the Franco-Belgian comic "Lucky Luke," which will publish in English next month as "A Cowboy in High Cotton."

■ ■ ■

Thompson, 55, grew up in Memphis. He liked reading biographies and started writing late in high school, after discovering the work of beat poet Richard Brautigan.

"I realized poetry doesn't have to rhyme," Thompson says. "It can be cool and break rules and I fell in love with poetry and short stories."

He attended what was then Memphis State University and took creative writing courses under acclaimed novelist and short story writer Barry Hannah at the University of Mississippi.

"That changed my life," Thompson recalls. "He was instrumental in teaching me so much. He treated me like an equal when I didn't deserve it."

On Hannah's advice, Thompson went to the University of Arkansas for his masters of fine arts in creative writing (Hannah was an alumnus).

"If that was his Athens, then it needed to be my Athens," he says. "It was a great experience."

Thompson bounced around as an adjunct professor and taught high school in Mobile, Ala. About 11 years ago, he was watching an interview with actor Morgan Freeman on CNN when something caught his attention.

"He's promoting a movie and one of the anchors asked him, 'What's your dream role?'" Thompson recalls. "He said, 'Oh, Bass Reeves, the greatest lawman of the wild West.' And he starts talking about this person I'd never heard of before."

Thompson, also the author of "Sideshow: Stories," began researching what little there was out there about Reeves and found Burton's book. An obsession was born.

He wanted to write a novel about Reeves and he wanted to earn his doctorate in Reeves' old stamping grounds. So he enrolled at the University of North Texas in Denton, where he specialized in Black narratives and researched Reeves.

"It's right in the back yard of Reeves' territory," he says. "I could take day trips around Oklahoma and the area."

Sidney Thompson (Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Rebecca Burleson)

Thompson soon realized that no single book could contain Bass Reeves — he would need a trilogy.

The first book, "Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves," was published in 2020 and details Reeves' time on the Arkansas plantation, the Civil War and his complex relationship with George Reeves.

In a blurb for the book, Burton says: "Sidney Thompson has the ability to pull you into the narrative and give you a glimpse of the antebellum life of a young slave destined for greatness as a lawman ... highly recommended."

The second book deals with Reeves' career as a lawman and the killing that found him on trial for murder.

Thompson skillfully weaves in flashbacks to earlier bounty hunts and Reeves' time as a slave to bring the reader up to speed (there's no need to have read the first book, though one might feel compelled to seek it out after finishing "Hell on the Border," whose title is a literary nose-thumb to Harmon's book).

He follows Reeves not only to catch the Coldirons, but also to apprehend the killer Jim Webb in a thrilling battle of wits and weapons.

Little Rock author Kevin Brockmeier has known Thompson for about 15 years.

"I think, like the most effective historical fiction, Sidney's work brings the immediacy of the present to the past," he says in an email. "The worlds his characters inhabit aren't alien or antique to them, so they aren't to us, either."

Brockmeier says in a blurb for "Hell on the Border" that Thompson has written "a finely calibrated trilogy about a subject who couldn't be more necessary to our moment. The Bass Reeves he depicts is as transparent to us as he is to himself, and also as mysterious — he is, that is to say, human — and the voice with which Thompson pursues him, at once austere and ornamented by its historical circumstances, is just one of the book's many enviable achievements."

■ ■ ■

So, why fiction? Why wouldn't Thompson take a deep dive into a biography?

"I was as fascinated with Bass Reeves' psychology as I was with his history," he says in an email. "I wanted to resurrect the man and his mind, how he saw the world, or how I honestly believed he saw the world anyway, as much as possible, and that would require fiction. I'm a storyteller. That's simply who I am ... In my books, I want to show what he did, too, but also why and how. To do that, I had to dig around in point of view for a long time; that's the labor of a fiction writer."

And, he adds, the weight of history and facts helped ground the story.

"I didn't want free reign of his story like I usually want as a storyteller. I didn't want to cheat history and spin a yarn just to spin one. To honor his story, I believed I needed to summon his spirit, so to speak, and to do that, I needed to remain as faithful to the historical record as I possibly could, and then fathom the rest. I hoped 'the rest' would then be closer to the truth, the psychological truth, of who Bass was, how this miracle of a man was humanly possible."

Thompson is also aware that some may question how a white man can tell the story of a Black icon.

"My parents were from Mississippi and they were well aware of Jim Crow laws. They made a great effort to make us aware of the feelings of others and the unfairness of [the] laws."

He attended majority-Black public schools in Memphis, he says, and his father taught what was then called Black English and literature at Memphis State University.

"My upbringing in Memphis, a city known for racial turmoil, was beneficial to me. As a writer, I've always felt free to write about issues that dealt with race. When I heard Morgan Freeman talking about Bass Reeves, I was inclined to jump on it."

Burton, who is Black, notes that "every individual has to look at history and life as they see it through their own eyes. He's writing about American history and he's American. I think it's fine."

Thompson is at work on the third book and says that the last decade-plus of researching, writing about and living with the life of Bass Reeves has left a lasting impression.

"The more I have thought about him, the more I've thought from his perspective; it has taught me to process things more and be more patient," he concludes. "When I was younger I would have come out guns blazing, but I wanted to get this right. I feel like Bass Reeves has taught me to be more observant and calm under duress. It's all I've been thinking about.

"Episode after episode, he managed to keep his cool and always believe in himself."

Andy Masich: Pittsburgh Has a Story to Tell - pittsburghquarterly.com

Posted: 29 Mar 2021 12:03 PM PDT

My father was an engineer and my mother was a trained actress who went to school at Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon University. (Her first kissing scene was with Carl Betz, a Pittsburgher, who played the husband on "The Donna Reed Show.") My parents met while doing community and summer-stock theatre. I have a wonderful photo of them on stage together.

I am one of four children, with an older brother and two younger sisters. My father died when I was just 8 years old of congestive heart failure, leaving my mom all on her own, with four kids. But when I was 16, she remarried. Our stepfather, a newly retired, disciplinarian school principal from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., had always dreamed of living in the American West. So, one summer, when he and my mom had been married for less than a year, they moved us all from Yonkers, N.Y., to Tucson, Ariz. Talk about culture shock. But, in retrospect, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me, even though I grumbled about it at the time.

When we arrived in Tucson—future historian that I was—the first question I asked was, "What happened here during the Civil War?" Nobody knew. There weren't any books on the subject. So, after graduating from high school, I went on to get a B.A. and an M.A. in history at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and ended up writing the book I always wanted to read: "The Civil War in Arizona." Before long, I went to work for a series of museums in Arizona and then in Colorado.

Andy Masich

Senator John Heinz History Center, President and CEO (1998–present)
Carnegie Mellon University, Ph.D., History (2014)
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Chairman and Commissioner (2011–present)
Arizona Historical Society's Central Arizona Division, Director (1985–1990)
Rio Colorado Division, Director (1978–1985)
University of Arizona, B.A., History and Anthropology (1977); M.A., History (1984)

As vice president at the Colorado Historical Society, I had 11 museums to mind, and my office was located in the main one, in Denver. One day, I got a call from a recruiter with the Korn Ferry organizational consulting group who said, "We think you should take a look at this history museum in Pittsburgh." I wasn't really interested in making a move at that time, but I liked the idea of Pittsburgh because I had family roots there going back five generations. All my grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents were buried in cemeteries in western Pennsylvania. I had been there as a boy for family reunions, but I never really got to know the city. So, I said, "Sure, I'll take a look."

Pittsburgh has more than its fair share of impressive history. It has a great story to tell and, at heart, I'm a storyteller who focuses on the human side of things. People are interested in people. And if you tell a good story about people in a way that engages your audience and provides a lesson, people will remember it, incorporate it into their lives and, hopefully, make good decisions in the present and plans for the future based on the wisdom of those who came before them. So, I went to visit Pittsburgh, fell in love with its people, even before I did the city, and accepted the job. The Senator John Heinz History Center was only half-built when I arrived and, while it had opened, it was not quite finished. But I was impressed with its board. They were determined to make the center work.

Back then, Pittsburgh had an identity crisis left over from the region's post-industrial decline. I could see how badly the people needed a place that told their city's story, something that would bolster civic pride. During my first month on the job, I reached out to historian and author David McCullough who was, in many ways, the inspiration for the History Center we have today. David believed that Pittsburgh deserved a major history institution but, at that point, all we had was a little place on Bigelow Boulevard in Oakland that was more a library and archive than a museum. It wasn't big enough to handle large objects or exhibits. In time, David helped us to raise the money we needed to build a new museum, this one in the Strip District. He inspired us and gave us the confidence we needed to forge ahead. David is among the most important mentors in my life.

Given that my father died young, at age 40, it was my mother who raised me. Everything I am I owe to my mother, who was a strong woman. I don't think she even had a driver's license when my dad passed. She had to learn so many things quickly for us to have a chance. Eventually, she went back to school and became a public-school speech therapist while struggling mightily to keep us together. We were latch-key kids which, in some ways, was good. It taught us to be independent.

As a kid, every summer, my family would travel to Lake Chautauqua where my grandmother had a house and, for some reason, I often found myself in her attic. Nobody went up there but me. It was home to, among other things, a bunch of old steamer trunks and in one was a cigar box that contained marbles, pen knives, and what looked like a bullet of some sort. So, I grabbed that "bullet," took it to my grandmother and asked, "What is this?" She said, "I don't really know what it is or where it came from. It must have been your grandfather's. Maybe it's from Gettysburg."

I was fascinated by that object and drew pictures of it in pencil. It is what's called a cylindro-conoidal projectile—a pointed bullet with a hollow base. One day, I decided to write a letter to the Smithsonian Institution (on blue-lined, school notebook paper, no less) and enclosed with it one of the pictures I had drawn of my bullet. To their credit, one of the curators there wrote back and said, "What you have there, son, is a Minié ball"—a type of muzzle-loading, spin-stabilized bullet for rifled muskets named after its developer, Claude-Étienne Minié, inventor of the French Minié rifle. Minié balls came to prominence in the American Civil War, and revolutionized warfare. In fact, it's the bullet that made the Civil War the deadliest war in American history.

So, obsessive as I am, I began collecting Minié balls. I wrote letters to people in the South and, sometimes, they'd just send them to me; some, I had to pay for. I wound up with the largest Civil War bullet collection in Yonkers. I then turned my boyhood bedroom into a museum. I made hats out of paper mâché and swords out of wood. The Civil War-era "Monitor" and "Merrimack" ships were made from popsicle sticks. I put labels on everything. And to enter my "museum," you had to take a brochure of my own creation from a rack on my door. I got increasingly interested in the Civil War, so much so that I even collected Civil War Centennial trading cards.

Years later, when I was working at the Colorado Historical Society, I heard that Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Killer Angels," about the Battle of Gettysburg, was going to be made into a movie. It was my favorite book about the war (and was also a favorite of Ken Burns, who was inspired by it to create his famous Civil War series for PBS). I had heard that Robert Redford bought the rights, so I called him and, of course, got his housekeeper. I told her, "I have to be in this movie." She transferred me to Redford's office manager who said, "Mr. Redford no longer owns the rights to that book. He sold them to Kevin Costner." So, I called Costner and didn't get him, either. I got his assistant, and she said, "Mr. Costner no longer owns the rights to that book. He sold them to Ted Turner." So, naturally, I called Ted Turner's office and convinced his people that I simply had to be in any movie that was made based on Michael Shaara's book. Incredibly, they hired me as a "background artist," which is one step above an "extra." But unlike an extra, a background artist could have a speaking part and appear close-up in the background of a movie scene. For 12 days, I took part in the filming at Gettysburg. I'm in the movie for 47 seconds. I even had a line but, sadly, it got cut. When it was made, the film was to be called "The Killer Angels," for obvious reasons. But about six weeks before its release, the film company's marketing department asked, "So, what's this movie about? 'The Killer Angels' sounds like a 'biker flick.'" They were told, "It's about the Civil War battle of Gettysburg," to which they replied, "Then why don't you just call the movie 'Gettysburg?'" And they did.

Back at the History Center, it was evident to me that, while we now had a large building, there wasn't space enough to mount changing exhibits. We only had little nooks and crannies for long-term, permanent ones. We couldn't bring in a 5,000- or 10,000-square-foot temporary show, something with critical mass, to draw a bigger audience. So, we were determined to build a changing exhibit gallery that would allow us to take on big projects.

In 1999, a year after I arrived at the center, I approached the Smithsonian Institution and said, "You have 144 million objects and specimens in your collection. I'd like to exhibit some of them in Pittsburgh." They had tons of World War II material and many patent models of things that had been invented here. They agreed to work with us, and we completed the affiliation in 2000. Becoming a Smithsonian affiliate meant that we had a contract with the world's largest museum that requires us to have Smithsonian objects on exhibit at all times. Today, on our first floor, we have the world's first Jeep, which was made in Butler, Pa., in 1940, and given to the Smithsonian by the U.S. War Department before the D-Day Invasion. They knew it was an important object, one that had replaced the horse and really changed things on the battlefield. Think about it now in terms of public acceptance. Every SUV owes its heritage to that little car.

In 2004, we finally built an addition to the History Center. We expanded the space to include the McGuinn Gallery (named after the former head of Mellon Bank, Marty McGuinn, who was and still is a strong supporter of ours) and the "Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum." Can you imagine the "City of Champions" without a sports museum? Odd, too, was the fact that there were no firearms in our collection at all, and no exhibits that dealt with war. It's OK to tell the story of a kinder, gentler Pittsburgh. But what of the "Arsenal of Democracy"? So, we wrote a strategic plan and put together a committee of around 100 Pittsburghers to talk about what they would like to see in their museum. We conducted interviews and focus groups, and did surveys asking, "What stories are important to you?" and came up with a new interpretive plan for the Heinz History Center.

When we were planning the expansion, I made sure that the architects knew that the floor of the gallery had to be strong enough to support a Sherman tank. After all, strength is part of our DNA. During World War II, Pittsburgh made more steel than all the Axis Powers put together, which gave us strength, toughness and resilience; that "can do" spirit. Today, we're "eds, meds and robotics." That's the future of Pittsburgh, for sure. But there's no reason for us to deny what made us who we are. And when we created our exhibit called "We Can Do It: World War II," we really did exhibit a Sherman tank in the gallery.

In retrospect, it was a good thing that we built a 10,000-square-foot, changing exhibit gallery on our first floor because, when it came time for the Smithsonian to re-do its Air and Space Museum in Washington, they had to move the original Apollo 11 capsule, and we were one of only four museums in America that were given the honor of exhibiting it. It weighed 17,000 pounds, and we had to demonstrate that our gallery floor could handle it. We knew it could handle a Sherman tank, so the space capsule presented no problem. We also had a 20-foot door that the capsule could easily roll through.

In normal times, 350,000 people a year visit the Heinz History Center. Many people, I'm sure, do not know that we also operate the Fort Pitt Museum and the Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village in Avella, Pa., the oldest site of human habitation in North America. So, we have tried many new things during my time here, and have helped to develop a collaborative museum system throughout Pittsburgh and the surrounding region.

In a way, the COVID-19 pandemic has propelled our strategic plan forward even faster than we anticipated. Into the future, we believe that we must deliver our message in broad strokes, through radio and television, and by way of the internet via podcasts, webinars and video presentations. I'm also continuing to communicate our message on national television through the History Channel. I believe that the future is not only about people coming to the History Center in person; it's about the History Center being welcomed into people's homes by way of new technology and new communication tools.

Some of my colleagues in the history world worry about the risk of giving away the store. "Who will come to our museums if we give it all away virtually?" I don't subscribe to that theory. I believe that there will always be a demand for the genuine article. When I was in Arizona, I did a weekly television show so, when I came here, I teamed up with KDKA-TV to do a show called "Pittsburgh's Hidden Treasures," which was kind of like "Antiques Roadshow." We did 11 seasons of that, and it was a terrific way to connect with the people of Pittsburgh through their own collections, objects and histories. I still do "Pittsburgh Time Capsules" on KDKA-AM, which are short subjects—one-to-two-minute histories. And I'm a regular on TV's "Pittsburgh Today Live," and on KDKA radio's morning show. I believe that having good relations with the media, locally and nationally, is very important. And I'm sure that people will still want to come together for in-person social experiences at the History Center itself.

When I first arrived at the Heinz History Center, we were having financial problems, and people wondered, "Could this museum really survive?" We had no endowment. People have the misimpression that, since we carry the "Heinz" name, we are supported financially by The Heinz Endowments and/or the H.J. Heinz Company. The truth is, we apply for grants, just as other institutions do, and occasionally, we get them. But that accounts for only about 2 percent of our budget. We're essentially a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps organization. Government support accounts for about 7 to 8 percent. And more than 30 percent of our budget comes from earned income. We have about 6,000 dues-paying members. Every year, we host many rights-of-passage events: weddings, bar mitzvahs, memorial services, retirement parties and corporate retreats. People have come to see the History Center as a great place to hold catered events, which is now a million-dollar business for us. And let's not forget donations from the public. Since I've been here, we've increased our endowment from about $2 million to $30 million, which helps us to defray many of our operating expenses. But we still have to work very hard every year to make ends meet.

To me, we're doing exciting things at the Heinz History Center, but our work is not finished, even though we've got one of the largest and most admired history centers in America today. People come from all over the country to see how we did it. Representatives of other cities come and ask, "How did you transition from your industrial base?" and "How did your 'renaissance' work?"

My roots in Pittsburgh are deep. Even though I didn't grow up here, I've been at the History Center for 22 years now and feel like a true Pittsburgher. I sometimes tease people that homing devices are implanted in Pittsburghers when they're born. My wife, Debbie, is a critical care nurse at Shadyside Hospital. We have raised three kids who have flown the coop and moved out West. But when people ask them where they're from, they all say "Pittsburgh," proudly. And, I think that if the right opportunities opened up for them here, they'd all come home.

Search This Blog

Famous Short Story